This year is rather unusual in Minnesota. A very late Labor Day means that there have been some deviations from the normal mandatory day after Labor Day start to the 2015-16 school year.
Nonetheless, the evening just past was doubtless a nervous one for K-12 students and their teachers and other school staff as the new school year begins. Everything happens at once. Returning to school is much like going to a family reunion; you know what to expect, but you’re not sure how you’ll perform, regardless of your particular role. I’d guess there was more than normal incidence of fitful sleep last night.
For reasons laid out in a previous post, this year, for me, is much more significant than usual. My early career, I was a junior high school geography teacher, and in 1965, in my third year, 50 years ago this week, probably on September 8, 1965, I met my first classes of eighth graders at Roosevelt Junior High School in the Minneapolis suburb of Blaine MN.
It was my first year in Minnesota*.
I remember very little of the month of August, 1965. I still work at filling in blanks of that month, through mining the memories of others. August, 1965, was a traumatic time for me.
I do remember, as one of many new teachers in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, taking a bus trip to see the Districts schools at the beginning of workshop week. In those years, this already massive district was growing by over 2000 students a year, and each year brought newly built schools, and lots of new teachers.
Roosevelt Junior High School had just opened. Everything was new.
The school, then, was out in the country, literally, bordered by farmland, and reached by a two lane road. The nearest housing development was about a mile south. That was a long time ago. Here’s a photo I took of the school about 1968 (my brother was piloting the plane, and, remember, I was a geography teacher!)
(click to enlarge all photos)

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by present day Roosevelt and took a few photos, all of which were reminders about 1965.



In the lobby, was a display case with some history of the school building itself:


Back in 1965, Roosevelt was grades 7-9; at some more recent point it became a Middle School, and at various point a new wing and a swimming pool were added, and the 10 acres were developed from the bare ground there when we opened the building.
In the course of 50 years, tens of thousand of students, and well over one thousand staff members have shared space at Roosevelt. Personally, I was there for seven years.
I was amazed at the wonderful condition of the school, so many years after it opened for business.
Today Roosevelt Middle School opens again for another year, and the faculty and staff greet a new crop of kids. Those quiet halls I walked a couple of weeks ago will teem with life again.
Each student will will receive a student planner with the “rules for the road” for the “town” that is Roosevelt Middle School. At the end of the planner are several pages we all might review. Here they are: Student Planner 2015-16001
My best wishes to the Roosevelt crowd, and to all school personnel everywhere.
Have a great year.
* POSTNOTE: My first August in Minnesota was in Anoka, then a country town, the county seat of Anoka County, perhaps 20 miles from downtown Minneapolis. The road to Minneapolis was two lane, down what was called the West River Road, alongside the Mississippi River.
I had been to Anoka once in my life, probably 1956, with my parents and siblings, when we stopped at Rum River Park. I know this only because I have a photo (which apparently I took). We would have been enroute to Chicago on U.S. 10 visit my Uncle and Aunt who had recently had their first child.

In 1965-66, my son and I lived at 1615 South Ferry Street, a block from the Mississippi River Bridge, “catty corner” from the Embers Restaurant across the street. Where the house stood is long gone. The Smarts, Mom, Dad and two kids, lived there, as did my son and I and perhaps one or two others who roomed upstairs. I don’t recall the others.
Being in a new town is a lot like being a young child again: one’s range is very limited.
For me, Anoka meant that house, an old corner cafe at the southeast corner of Ferry and Main Street, the old St. Stephen’s Catholic Church and Fr. Murphy. Much of that first month I drove into St. Louis Park to continue working in the original Lincoln Del. I worked there until early January when the toll of two jobs brought pneumonia to my door, and I had to quit. That broadened my horizon a tiny bit: the Mork Clinic and Goodrich Drug Store entered my sphere. But otherwise, mostly, Anoka was home, to work, either at the Del, or at Roosevelt Junior High School down then rural and two lane Co Rd 42, 125th Ave NW, 7 miles east of Anoka.
Anoka remains recognizable to me 50 years later, but like all places, particularly suburban, it is greatly changed by the passage of years.